


Let sleeping cats lie.

by eratedgore



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, some description of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 14:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eratedgore/pseuds/eratedgore
Summary: Kimihiro saves a cat, or maybe he doesn't.





	Let sleeping cats lie.

It drowned in the river. The blood staining its fur must be from rocks in the river that it hit while tumbling past. The cat’s fur is wet and sticks to his hand in sad tufts, but Kimihiro still strokes it.

“I wonder if I’ll die alone like this too,” he murmurs absentmindedly. Rain hits his glasses, temporarily blurring his vision. He stares at the fur around its bare neck. Did it lose its collar? Did it never have one? Something purrs. The cat tries to rub its head against him. Animals have never particularly liked him, but he isn’t particularly surprised that this one does now. He cut his hand when picking it up; maybe it’s attracted to the smell.

“Thank you,” he imagines it saying, because that’s what he would be saying in this situation. “For being with me in the end.” Kimihiro would be truly surprised if there was anyone with him in his final moments, but maybe he could be there for someone else.

“But maybe, if I had been here earlier, I could’ve saved you,” Kimihiro says to no one in particular. The cat looks up at him. “Maybe if I was here, I could’ve ran in and pulled you out.” He imagines jumping in, but having his feet swept out from beneath him. Water fills his lungs as he gasps for air, and he bashes his head in on a particularly nasty, jutting rock. His body gets stuck beneath a bridge and it takes days for anyone to find him, even longer for anyone to realize he’s gone.

The cat cranes its head and meows loudly at something behind them. Kimihiro turns, and sees someone from his school walking away, glancing back at him. Kimihiro doesn’t recognize him, and hopes that whoever it is doesn’t recognize him back. That’s all he needs, he thinks, someone from school seeing him holding a dead cat and thinking he’s even weirder. The cat meows softly. He’ll have to ask the landlord if there’s a place he could bury it. He’s not going to leave it in the river. In the cold. Alone. He couldn’t wish that upon anyone.

It rains the whole way home. Kimihiro took off his jacket to cover the cat— it’s weirder to hold a dead animal than to hold your jacket in the rain. Well, maybe no one will even look at him in the first place. He’s gotten better at holding in the surprise and the outbursts at the sight of spirits, and so people have paid almost no attention to him lately.

“It’s fine like this,” the cat says, peeking out from underneath the jacket. It’s teeth flash as its mouth moves. “It would be worse if people paid attention to you. Right, Kimihiro? Right?”

“Be quiet,” Kimihiro mutters. “It’ll be better to bury you in peace.” The cat laughs. It is loud and sharp, and it makes Kimihiro’s stomach turn and twist frustratedly.

“As if either of us could find peace.” It smiles. Kimihiro remembers that movie about a girl named Alice the landlord had shown him once while taking care of him. The purple cat grinned and made fun of Alice the whole way through, and Kimihiro felt so bad for her. His whole life had been like that, after all. Things, strange things that popped up just as quickly as they left, things that tormented him and hated him.

“I wish you had stayed silent,” he spits. The frustration boils up— why does it always have to be like this? Tears well up in his eyes. “I just wanted to bury you!” He quickens his pace. He wants to get home.

“If you hadn’t picked me up, Kimihiro, I would’ve stayed quiet. Peace and quiet, Kimihiro. And you honestly thought I’d thank you!” The creature sinks its teeth and claws into his skin, and Kimihiro winces, clenching his jaw. It leaps from his arms. The body splats against the ground, a bloodstain on the concrete. Its eyes roll and focus on him. “Damn you, Watanuki Kimihiro. Die alone, bastard.” The blurred thing runs off and disappears around the corner. The blood from his arm turns an acidic red. Tears run down Kimihiro’s face, and he angrily snatches his jacket up.

“I was planning on that without you saying anything!”

He runs the rest of the way home. His lungs burn, and his legs protest, but he only stops when he’s slammed the door to his apartment behind him. He makes it five steps in before he collapses. The rain is loud on the roof and against the window. As his tears subside, shame washes over him in waves. Usually, he isn’t so emotional after some stupid interaction with a spirit like this. He knows he’s a dramatic person, but it isn’t bad enough to make him cry most of the time. Kimihiro picks himself up off the floor and walks over to the picture of his parents. He can never look at it for long before their faces begin to blur, and his hands shake so hard he could drop the picture and shatter it everywhere across the floor.

They smile at him, and he smiles back. His father picks him up lovingly in his arms, and Kimihiro buries his face in his shoulder. I’m sorry, his father says, that you have to pay this price for us. His mother lovingly strokes his wet hair. Thank you Kimihiro, she says, as something like a train taps them on the shoulder and crashes into them. His father drops him, and Kimihiro falls, and falls, and falls. Glass and blood sprays everywhere, and Kimihiro cries, because his mother and father have died in an accident, but there are no accidents, there is only fate, the witch says. Someday you’ll find someone, they say, holding his hands and lying on the ground next to him like bloodstains. His mother caresses his cheek. Someone sobs with one eye, and Kimihiro looks up at him through his cracked glasses. He is kneeling in front of him, underneath a cherry blossom tree, crying. Kimihiro takes his hand. Don’t disappear, he whispers feverishly. Don’t disappear, don’t disappear. The soil retakes his borrowed flesh and bones. Blue, purple, and pink petals soak it all up and turn red. I won’t disappear, Kimihiro thinks. I'm alive and dead too. As long as they find me, I’ll only be buried.

He wakes at four in the morning. The rain’s finally stopped outside, but his room is still cold, and somehow Kimihiro’s twisted all of his sheets around his legs. He shivers as he tries to untangle himself. He didn’t dry himself off before falling asleep, and now everything is wet and he’s even colder. Kimihiro yanks too hard at the sheets with his arm and yelps. It’s incredibly sore, and looking down, he sees a deep purple bruise blooming on his arm. It hurts, but eventually it will turn yellow and fade away. Eventually, this day will melt with all the others in his head, making a sad concoction of dreamlike memories and won’t matter anymore, just as all the others have. Nothing will change, Kimihiro decides, resigning to his fate and pulling his white sheets back over him, lying down much like a corpse.

**Author's Note:**

> trying to achieve another kind of surreality with mentioning that the cat is Dead but it's still talking to watanuki somehow, and of course there's a dream sequence. i love you watanuki!


End file.
